Transforming urban infrastructure provision—The emerging logic of demand side management

The provision of electricity, water and transportation forms a vital underpinning to urban development. Despite this importance, the mode by which infrastructure services are provided has been largely taken for granted and has attracted relatively little interest from urban studies and policy‐ making communities. This paper, based on the results of an 18 month ESRC Global Environmental Change programme project, reconnects urban policy to infrastructure management by highlighting how the adoption of supply‐led or more demand‐responsive modes of infrastructure provision critically shapes the intensity, and so the relative environmental impact, of networked services in contemporary cities. The paper highlights how DSM initiatives create a ‘new context’ within which infrastructure providers and users form a shared interest in the tailoring of supply and demand providing a powerful impetus to energy and water efficiency measures and more integrated transport packages. The paper argues that local policy makers must forge new coalitions of interest with infrastructure providers in order to reconnect urban policy to more environmentally sensitive forms of network management.